Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 3

SR No.: 001003
Original Sutra Author: Hemchandracharya
Author: Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra
Publication Year: 1949
Total Pages: 441
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Mythology, & Story
File Size: 10 MB

Page 324

TENTH INCARNATION AS MEGHARATHA
295
The king, an ocean with waves of clairvoyant knowledge, knew their suitability and ordered a fast at the proper time. They observed the fast, died with pure thoughts, and were born as chief-gods among the Bhavanavāsins.
After he had completed pauṣadha, King Megharatha continued to protect the earth properly, like embodied law. One day as the king recalled the story of the dove and hawk, he attained extreme disgust with existence, the seed of the tree of tranquillity. He fasted for three days and remained in pratima to endure attacks and trials, his body motionless as a mountain-peak. At that time the Indra of Iśāna, seated in the women's apartments, said, 'Reverence to you, Blessed One," and bowed. His queens asked, "To whom, lord, was this reverence with extreme devotion shown by you who are entitled to reverence from the world?"
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The Indra of Iśāna replied: "The son of Arhat Ghanaratha, King Megharatha by name, who has fasted for three days and is engaged in pure meditation, is standing in meditation in the city Pundarikini, like a white lotus in a pool. He is a future Tirthankara, an ornament of Bharatakṣetra. When I, being here, saw him, I bowed to him. Troops of gods and demons, even with their Indras, cannot shake him, resolute, from that meditation, to say nothing of mortals, et cetera."
Two queens of the Indra of Iśāna, Surūpā and Atirūpikā, could not endure the praise of the king and went to disturb him. They created young women, waves of the water of loveliness, like a living citadel or victorious weapon of Minalakṣman (Käma). They undertook agreeable attacks (on him) by various manifestations, lifegiving medicines of Smara. One displayed her shoulder, the abode of the root of love, under the pretext of binding her braid of hair falsely disarranged; another showed her hips, her garment half-fallen, that were like a mirror with its cover removed. One lifted her eyebrow repeatedly, like